


First Disobedience

by Lujuria



Category: Vampyr (Video Game)
Genre: Blood, Blood and Violence, Brief Mention Of Other Canon Characters, Character Study, Childhood Memories, Childhood Trauma, Don't copy to another site, Experimental Style, Foreshadowing, Gen, Gore, Gwyneth Branagan - Freeform, Horror, One Shot, Pre-Canon, Prompt Fill, Psychological Horror, Short One Shot, Spoilers, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-14
Updated: 2019-01-14
Packaged: 2019-10-10 02:05:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17416937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lujuria/pseuds/Lujuria
Summary: Dr. Edgar Swansea reflects on his days as a young boy—a time where he was once eager, but innocent, to the existence of the undead.





	First Disobedience

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Orionali](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Orionali/gifts).



> Thank you to the Vampyr Discord for helping me beta.
> 
> A friend wanted me to take a look back at Edgar's life. I decided to fulfil the idea in a more experimental writing style just to see what would happen.

Upon the dreary, frigid, lifeless night in the winter of this year, the plague coming to pass, cadavers laying waste in beds with snow that seeped into the hot flesh of living bodies, rising into the cracks of desolate cobblestone—as seafoam would by the waves. Edgar dwelled in the welcoming, dark lustre of twilight beneath his office, no other choice left afore him, left to sit at his desk. To perhaps contemplate, to perhaps gaze down—every wall and floor acting as transparent, vacant eyes into a red sea. A first glimpse down below—yes—such things would act as his perpetual comforts; otherwise, he would be left unnerved at the idea of savouring lustful contemplations. He sat down, turned his chair around, and stared longingly outside through opulent glass.

The evening passed on, Pembroke strangely desolate, quiet, lifeless. Perhaps all of her patients have finally been cured, or perhaps the silence is the augur of eternal rest, life went suddenly, only in mass exodus. Edgar could not tell—were the glistening lights of reds laying at full length his patients, or were they his employees, laying themselves after long, restless nights, shedding silent tears? His leering felt predatory, carnivorous—a sensation that etched a grimace on his face. He shouldn’t stare—shouldn’t watch! It was not his right to ogle a sight that was not meant for the eyes to see. A shudder slithers up his cold spine, holding himself as a mother would—an embrace tight, amorous, overbearing—a love that promised eternal care, with an underlying embrace that spoke of scorn and otherworldly wrath.

There was something remarkable about such an intimate, yet dangerous association, one long lost. Adrift, just like himself, when he should not be! There was a hospital to uphold, lives to save, and above all—discoveries to pursue, and entrap for his own well of knowledge. However—he paused to think—this mental malady would not go away. Thoughts of his deathly friend persisted, of himself, of what is _left_ of himself. His head fell back to the cushioned, red chair—eyes elsewhere as his mind gripped for an idea.

 

Moments passed.

 _“Well…”,_ he pondered. If he cannot thwart the images, he shall at least _attempt_ to replace them with images his own—one of solitary, wistful wishes.

They crept in, a flood of familiar peculiarities. The natal days of his current fascinations. As a boy, he found himself within a home of eccentric sensibilities. A passion devoted to intricacies of the archaic—his time feeling aeons away from this Industrial Age. Time was once lit up by candle work, obtrusive sentimentalities, the bitter lapse of wax to lamps. The flutter of dawn leaking in through the sound of water, a shimmer next to his boyish bedside, dusk following him, to cradle him deep in its lonesome. At each dawn, he was accosted by an ineffectual, yet a still cordial and kind woman, who may as well have been the mistress of his sullen home. At breakfast and lunch, he was served teas and lavish pastries alike, and by night a hearty meal of whatever the coast held in its bosom! Edgar seeped into the seat, deep in reminiscence, dreaming his walks with her—through aisles of decayed stone; strolling within the lofty, Gothic sight to the eyes. Macabre carvings of the wooden ceiling, sombre and encrimsoned tapestries, the raven darkness of each wooden panel, whereby they would _creak!_ And _creak!_ And _creak!_ Each time he snuck away from his solitary bed to rummage through warm, sullen cloth which held the phantasmagoric pleasure of his father’s medical work, that _creak_ always marked his doom. Not even the furniture ushered him solace, for Edgar grew tall in a matter of a few years, making the antiqued furniture or the scattered piles of books and medical instruments of no use to concealing his mischievous visage from his keen-eyed nanny. All of his home lacked vitaliy—bereft of nought more than dark, crestfallen endowments, but it invigorated Edgar’s spirit further—a cheerful light, brimming within a vast, abyssal space of stern gloom. He loved it, always taken by it, a beauty that surpassed life, a beauty that surpassed death—transcendence in melancholy. But small, young Edgar knew little of true beauty.

Shakingly, his hands clasped to the arms of the comfortable abode—mind quickly awashed by feeble glimmers of fond, miraculous happiness. Quickly, they came. In a moment, they fled. Like a dying breath. Images of his parents, away from the nanny—sparse they were, never allowed to last, almost as if they were never allowed to stay with their little boy. A pity, truly. It was dawn and dusks like that, empty ones which filled him with sadness and yearning—where the dark draperies truly embodied, as well as emboldened, the spirit of melancholy that otherwise should have lasted _all_ his time at that home. 

But the bright, prodigal son could never dim his flame. One soul still remained with him, _cared_ for him! Provided by his parents themselves! “Yes!” He would always tell himself, like prayers during mass, “Nothing can remain sad forever, nor could anyone. Neither can I.”

 

Then, he remembered lifting himself at night.

Upon a dreary, frigid, lifeless night in the winter of that year. A rattle of the creaking floorboards as he rose. The old clock struck twelve, far too early for any boy to be awake. He should simply sleep again. But the floorboards—they, too—rattled _again,_ without boyish contemplation. His room was one floor above the family room. He opened his door, the room below encroaching with its darkness into his room, only glowing with dim candlelight by this time of night. So vast a distance those stairs seemed—he has never snuck out so late, not ever, not even to peek at his father’s mesmerizing medical books. This would be the first sin—the natal night of the first disobedience. The clock ticked. And ticked. And ticked.  
  
Another rattle, followed by a voice—no, two voices! A duet of sounds that Edgar could not discern, filling him with the vivacious intrigue needed, alongside an act of sudden, uncharacteristic courage. Perhaps it was father and mother, but father was always brusque about visitation, especially at hours and eves such as this. He was heinously superstitious _(what else could Edgar call it?)_ like all righteous, God-fearing men ought to be. But the curiosity—worse more, the hope to see them—would not subside. He must know who or what lingers below! He _must!_

Each creak followed crooked, staccato steps. Then, a low, soft sound. A sound unlike anything of which he ever heard. Low, yet audible. He further clung himself to the arms of the staircase, hugging it—almost fearful of what would happen should he let go. But why, at that moment, was he fearful? Why did he feel amiss? Had a little boy started to grow fearful of his own disobedient desire? He would be punished by whatever lurked below—surely—he would—

The sound became unusually strong. A scream! A scream in the dead of night! A woman’s scream—voice at her highest pitch! Part of him swore it had simultaneously been both the most wondrous, and most eerie sound he had ever had the chance of listening to. A guttural sound. A blood-curdling sound. The feeling of sweat ran down in rivulets down his back, shadowed by a cold feeling rising in his chest, drowning out the warm flow of blood in his veins. His head dared to poke in, his eyes catching upon a sight that shall never be released by him or ever _taken_ away from him. A countenance foreboding evil. A most dreadful visitation. The embodiment of walking death. Something in the shape of a man held his nanny, held her screams, her writhing body upon which the mere sight alone could send one to their early deaths out of sheer stupor and shock. But young Edgar, his young, cheerful self, kept _leering._ Watching. Staring. Staring death in the face! He could not look away, not from the nanny, or from the male that mimicked the shape of a live thing, for he was no _live_ creature. Tall, shadowy. Grey-pale skin, eyes half-lidded in dreadful bliss, their shape hauntingly phantasmagoric and incredible. Deterioration mixed with forbidden vitality—the lurid white of dead skin, the cadaverousness of his deep, red eyes, looking upon his nanny like a vulture’s! Shimmering! Glowing! The eye of an animal that waited to feast upon a body to pull its flesh to pieces! How his hands clung at her, claws that kneaded at the breast. Translucent, otherworldly, not of this place, not of this realm. A harbinger. A dark harbinger in Edgar’s dark home, the sight of red dripping into ebon floorboards finally, almost irredeemably, brought the image of life into these dead halls. His dead, kind nanny, brought more life with the rich colour of her veins. With her dying body.

Presently—the sight made Edgar’s mouth salivate, like the vulture waiting to strike, only for his mouth to be mixed instead with the bitter taste of salty, stringent tears, just as it did when was a boy, watching his nanny die, believing her death magnificent, only for guilt to collapse his breath. His melancholic transcendence was achieved. He had found his Faustian revelation. His bloody cathexis. Immoral, grotesque, but Edgar could not help himself. Not then, and not now. He witnessed a person—no—a _being,_ beyond himself, beyond his poor nanny. How _could_ he help himself?

There was no time to waste! No more! Edgar awoke, the memories having sent a dead creature to momentary slumber. Another lost thing, surely, only to be replaced with the pungent taste of his own blood, tainted iron pooling on his tongue. Even then—it was savoured, alongside his sniffles and wakeful gasps.

A knock jolted him out! Louder, louder, and louder it came! A predatory sense reemerged, only to quell still, slowly swirling away his startled form as he recognized the shape of red at his door. Nurse Branagan had knocked, rather abruptly Edgar would add! Not without reason, it seemed. Why, according to her, it seems that the good administrator had been away in his mind for nearly two hours too long.

No matter. A breath for his withering body, and a smile for his blind, hopeful self.

 

He stands, calling out to the worried nurse beyond the wooden door,

“Don’t worry. I will be right there!”


End file.
